Since the pandemic began, the reporting in the newspapers around this part of the world have pointed to a general increase in online purchases. That’s to be expected of course, since for a good part of 2020, brick and mortar shops have had to close and in the third quarter onwards, ensure social distancing when they re-open. And even with those measures, many of us have been reluctant to visit shops in person to browse wares.
Truth to tell, I don’t think my online shopping habits have changed that much even with this pandemic – in that I still visit the usual cluster of online store platforms and aggregate sites to check on bargains, replace things that have broken at home, or try out new gizmos. Still, I figured it’d be fun now to reflect on the bunch of relatively low-priced accessories, gadgets and trinkets I’ve picked up in the last six months and since March this year – right about when the world started enforcing measures to deal with the pandemic:
Portable laptop stands: these are nifty little gadgets that are typically made from metallic materials (e.g. aluminum) that prop your laptop at an inclined angle. They also can be folded and tossed into a laptop bag. There are several purported benefits of putting your laptop on an incline: better viewing and reading posture, increasing your usable space on the table, and increasing airflow – especially if your laptop vents expel air from beneath. Of these three benefits and when my laptop is propped up using the stand, typing is actually at a very slightly less natural angle for me but viewing angle is indeed just that bit more relaxing on the neck + I can stow a couple of stationery items underneath the laptop now + laptops do indeed run cooler, particularly if I’m on my Aero 15-X9. In all, I’m pretty happy with these gadgets, and picked up two: one fairly compact stand for my 13.3″ laptops and tablets, and a larger heavier stand for the Aero 15.
M.2 and 2.5″ drive casings: I recently gave away my 4.5 year old Aftershock S17 to a neighbor. The S17 has pretty much stopped working in March this year, and I was about to toss it into e-recycling when a Minton neighbor asked our Facebook community if there were residents who had a spoiled laptop to spare. She had a little child at home who wanted to emulate her parents at work! I was more than happy to oblige, since the S17 has been a wonderful machine and this would be a final lease of life for it. So, I stripped the S17 off its storage and RAM components, and passed it along. That meant I now had a spare NGFF type storage device, and also a 2.5″ SSD – both of which at around 250GB capacities, are as old as the S17 but still otherwise in working condition. So, I picked up additional drive casings for them to turn them into external storage devices.
There are a couple of Chinese brands whose accessory-type products I’ve found to be reliable (so far) and of reasonably good build quality too. And of that couple, the brand Ugreen is the one I’ve had the most luck with. I’ve bought several dozens of their items over the last few years, especially USB type cables. They also apparently have a local distribution point in Singapore c/o Amazon.SG, so you can order items from there and get them in the next day or so. The list prices for the items are actually even cheaper if you buy them on Lazada – though you’d need to accept a week long wait as these items would ship from China instead.
USB-C power chargers: my project to, basically, move as much of our mobile computing and technological devices to the USB-C charging standard started 3 years ago, and I’ve been largely successful… for the most part! At this point, both Ling and my handphones (basically Samsungs), iPad Pro 11, MiPad 4, five of our seven laptops at home (the Dell XPS 13, HP Pro x2 G2, Elite X2 1012 G2, Lenovo X1 Carbon, and Ling’s school-provided notebook) the Sony A73 etc. can all be charged using USB-C. Quite nifty, since I can concentrate on picking up the best charger devices and supporting cables that will ensure the most optimum and safe charging for all our devices.
During this Covid 19 period, I’ve picked up three USB-C chargers that provide power that exceeds 60W – two Ugreen 65W and one Innergie 60W single port bricks – and a monstrous-sized USB-C charging hub that can put out a whopping 111W, including 87W in its USB-C PD port – the Nekteck 111W USB C Wall Charger Station. Of the four, the the Necteck isn’t especially mobile – it’s freakin’ heavy in fact – so it sits on my home work desk permanently, driving one laptop and several other smaller devices like my smartwatch chargers, tablets, and Bluetooth speakers. Of the other three, I’m particularly happy with the pair of Ugreen 65W chargers: they reliably fast charge without fuss across all five laptops and smartphones, and I bought them for cheap – around SGD30 each – though they don’t come with USB-C charging cables. The Innergie is a slightly more compact charger and has a built-in 2m long cable, and is significantly more expensive here – around SGD52 – and the HP Pro x2 G2 wouldn’t charge from it (the other four are OK).
That’s a wrap for this one. I might do a follow-up post on the other gadgets too in the next month – including a Xiaomi electric toothbrush, metallic mousepads, mini Bluetooth speakers, and the Google Nest Mini!
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